Misplaced Legion (Videssos Cycle) (26 page)

The adopted Roman’s comment made clear something Scaurus had puzzled over for some time. No wonder Mavrikios looked so bleak when he admitted his earlier inability to move against Yezd! The past year had seen the Empire’s power vastly increase and, in the face of the Yezda threat, its unity as well. The tribune better understood Mavrikios’ pouched, red-veined eyes; it was strange he dared sleep at all.

Yet power and unity still did not walk hand in hand in Videssos, as Marcus discovered a few mornings later. The tribune had urged Apokavkos to keep the street connections he’d made in the city. Marcus saw how the Namdaleni were excluded from the news and rumors always seething, and did not want his Romans similarly deprived. The report Phostis brought made him thankful for his forethought.

“If it didn’t have us in it, too, I likely wouldn’t tell you this,” Apokavkos said, “but I think it’d be smart for us to walk small the next few days. There’s trouble brewing against the damned easterners, and too many in town put us and them in the same wagon.”

“Against the Namdaleni?” Marcus asked. At Phostis’ nod, he said, “But why? They’ve quarreled with the Empire, true, but every one of them in the city now is here to fight Yezd.”

“There’s too many of ’em here, and they’re too proud of themselves, the swaggering rubes.” Phostis’ conversion to Roman tastes did not stretch to the men of the Duchy. “Not only that, they’ve taken over half a dozen shrines for their own services, the damned heretics. Next thing you know, they’ll start trying to convert decent folk to their ways. That won’t do.”

Marcus suppressed a strong impulse to scream. Would no one in this god-ridden world forget religion long enough to do anything needful? If the followers of Phos as sure victor over evil fought those who believed in Phos’ Wager, then the only winners would be Skotos-worshippers. But when the Roman suggested that to Apokavkos, his answer was, “I don’t know but what I’d sooner see Wulghash ruling in Videssos than Duke Tomond of Namdalen.”

Throwing his hands in the air, Scaurus went off to pass the
warning to Soteric. The islander was not in his usual billet on the ground floor of the barracks. “He’s with his sister, I think. You can probably find him there,” offered one of the men whose bed was nearby.

“Thanks,” the tribune said, heading for the stairway. As usual, the prospect of seeing Helvis made him skittish and eager at the same time. He was aware that more than once he’d invented excuses to visit Soteric in the hope of encountering his sister. This time, though, he reminded himself, his business with the Namdalener was real and urgent.

“By the Wager!” Soteric exclaimed when he saw who was knocking on Helvis’ door. “Talk about someone and just see if he doesn’t show up.” That was an opening to take Scaurus clean out of play, especially since the Namdalener declined to follow it up and left Marcus guessing.

“Would you care for some wine, or some bread and cheese?” Helvis asked when the Roman was comfortable. She was still far from the vibrant lady who had caught his fancy a few weeks before, but time, as it always does, was beginning its healing work. The pinched look of pain that sat so wrongly on her lively features was not so pronounced now; there were times again when her smile would reach her eyes.

Malric darted into the livingroom from the bedchamber beyond. He was carrying a tiny wooden sword. “Kill a Yezda!” he announced, swinging his toy blade with three-year-old ferocity.

Helvis caught up her son and swung him into the air. He squealed in glee, dropping his play weapon. “Again!” he said. “Again!” Instead, his mother squeezed him to her with fierce intensity, remembering Hemond in him.

“Run along, son,” Soteric said when his nephew was on his feet again. Grabbing up his sword, the boy dashed away at the same breakneck speed he’d used to come in. Recalling his own younger sisters growing up, Scaurus knew all small children were either going at full tilt or asleep, with next to nothing in between.

Once Malric was gone, the tribune told Soteric the story he had heard from Phostis Apokavkos. The islander’s first reaction was not the alarm Marcus had felt, but rather smoldering eagerness. “Let the rabble come!” he said, smacking fist into palm for emphasis. “We’ll clean the bastards out, and it’ll give
us the excuse we need for war on the Empire. Namdalen will inherit Videssos’ mantle soon enough—why not now?”

Scaurus gaped at him, flabbergasted. He knew the men of the Duchy coveted the city and the whole Empire, but Soteric’s arrogance struck him as being past sanity. Helvis was staring at her brother, too. As softly as he could, Marcus tried to nudge him back toward sense. “You’ll take and hold the capital with six thousand men?” he asked politely.

“Eight thousand! And some of the Khamorth will surely join us—their sport is plunder.”

“Quite true, I’m sure. And once you’ve disposed of the rest of the plainsmen, the Emperor’s Haloga guards, and the forty thousand or so Videssian warriors in the city, why then all you need do is keep down the whole town. They’d hate you doubly—for being heretics and conquerors both. I wish you good fortune, for you’ll need it.”

The Namdalener officer looked at him as Malric would if he’d snapped the boy’s toy sword over his knee. “Then you didn’t come to offer your men as allies in the fight?”

“Allies in the fight?” If it came to a fight such as Soteric envisioned, Scaurus hoped the Romans would be on the other side, but he guessed the islander would be more furious than chastened to hear that. The tribune was still marveling at Soteric’s incredible … there was no word in Latin for it. He had to think in Greek to find the notion he wanted:
hubris
. What tragedian had written, “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad”?

Gorgidas would know, he thought.

Some of the ravening glitter in Soteric’s eye faded as he saw Marcus’ rejection. He looked to his sister for support, but Helvis would not meet his glance. She was as ardent a Namdalener as her brother, but too firmly rooted in reality to be swept away by a vision of conquest, no matter how glowing.

“I came to stop a riot, not start a war,” Marcus said into the silence. He looked for some reason he could use to draw Soteric from his dangerous course without making him lose face. Luckily, one was close at hand. “With Yezd to be dealt with, neither you nor the Empire can afford secondary fights.”

There was more than enough truth in that to make Soteric stop and think. The smile on his face had nothing to do with amusement; it was more like a stifled snarl. “What would you
have us do?” he asked at last. “Hide our beliefs? Skulk like cowards to keep from firing the rabble? The Videssians have no shame over throwing their creed in our faces. I’d sooner fight than kowtow to the street mob, and damn the consequences, say I!” But mixed with the warrior’s pride in his speech was the frustrated realization that the outcome of such a fight likely would not be what he wished.

Marcus tried to capitalize on the islander’s slowly emerging good sense. “No one would expect you to knuckle under,” he said. “But a little restraint now could stop endless trouble later.”

“Let the bloody Cocksures show restraint,” Soteric snapped, using the Duchy’s nickname for the orthodox of Videssos.

Continued contact with the Namdalener’s hot temper was beginning to fray Scaurus’ own. “There’s the very thing I’m talking about,” he said. “Call someone a ‘Cocksure’ once too often and you can be sure you’ll have a scramble on your hands.”

Up to this time Helvis had listened to her brother and the Roman argue without taking much part. Now she said, “It seems to me the two of you are only touching one part of the problem. The city people may like us better if we’re less open about some things they don’t care for, but what we do can only go so far. If Videssos needs our service, the Emperor—or someone—should make the people know we’re important to them and should not be abused.”

“Should, should, should,” Soteric said mockingly. “Who would put his neck on the block for a miserable band of mercenaries?”

It was plain he did not think his sister would have a good answer for him. Thinking of the government leaders he knew, Marcus did not find it likely either. Mavrikios or Thorisin Gavras would sacrifice the men of the Duchy without a qualm if they interfered with the great campaign against Yezd. Nephon Khoumnos might sacrifice them anyway, on general principles. True, the Namdaleni were part of the power Vardanes Sphrantzes wielded against the Gavrai, but the Sevastos, Scaurus was sure, was too unpopular in the city to make his words, even if given, worth much.

But Helvis did have a reply, and one so apt Marcus felt like
a blockhead for not finding it himself. “What of Balsamon?” she asked. “He strikes me as a good man, and one the Videssians listen to.”

“The Cocksures’ patriarch?” Soteric said incredulously. “Any Videssian blue-robe would send us all to the eternal ice before he’d lift a finger for us.”

“Of most of them I would say that’s true, but Balsamon has a different feel to him. He’s never harassed us, you know,” Helvis said.

“Your sister’s right, I think,” Marcus said to Soteric. He told him of the startling tolerance the prelate of Videssos had shown in the Emperor’s chambers.

“Hmm,” Soteric said. “It’s easy enough to be tolerant in private. Will he do it when it counts? There’s the rub.” He rose to his feet. “Well, what are the two of you waiting for? We’d best find out—myself, I’ll believe it when I hear it.”

The ruthless energy Soteric had wanted to turn on Videssos now was bent against his sister and the tribune. Helvis paused only to pick up her son—“Come on, Malric, we’re going to see someone.”—and Marcus not at all, but they were not quick enough to suit Soteric. Scoffing at Helvis’ idea at the same time as he pushed it forward, her brother had her and Scaurus out of the Namdalener barracks, out of the palace complex, and into the hurly-burly of the city almost before the Roman could blink.

The patriarchal residence was in the northern central part of Videssos, on the grounds of Phos’ High Temple. The Roman had not cared to visit that, but some of his men who had taken to Phos marveled at its splendor. The High Temple’s spires, topped with their gilded domes, were visible throughout the city; the only problem in reaching them was picking the proper path through Videssos’ maze of roads, lanes, and alleys. Soteric led the way with assurance.

More by what did not happen than by what did, Marcus got the feel of how unwelcome foreigners had become in the capital. It was as if the city dwellers were trying to pretend they did not exist. No merchant came rushing out of his shop to importune them, no peddler approached to ply his wares, no small boy came up to offer to lead them to his father’s hostel. The tribune wryly remembered how annoyed he had been at
not achieving anonymity after his fight with Avshar. Now he had it, and found he did not want it.

Malric was entranced by the colors, sounds, and smells of the city, so different from and so much more exciting than the barracks he was used to. Half the time he walked along among Helvis, Soteric, and Marcus, doing his short-legged best to keep up; they carried him the rest of the way, passing him from one to the next. His three constant demands were, “Put me down,” “Pick me up,” and, most of all, “What’s that?” Everything drew the last query: a piebald horse, a painter’s scaffold, a prostitute of dubious gender.

“Good question,” Soteric chuckled as the quean sauntered past. His nephew was not listening—a scrawny black puppy with floopy ears had stolen his interest.

The High Temple of Phos sat in lordly solitude at the center of a large enclosed courtyard. Like the arena by the palace complex, it was one of the city’s main gathering points. At need, lesser priests would speak to the masses assembled outside the Temple while the prelate addressed the smaller, more select audience within.

The residence of the patriarchs of Videssos stood just outside the courtyard. It was a surprisingly unassuming structure; many moderately wealthy traders had larger, more palatial quarters. But the modest building had a feeling of perpetuity to it that the houses of the newly wealthy could not hope to imitate. The very pine trees set round it were gnarled and twisted with age, yet still green and growing.

Coming from young Rome, whose history was little more than legend even three centuries before his own time, Marcus had never quite gotten over the awe Videssos’ long past raised in him. To him, the ancient but vigorous trees were a good metaphor for the Empire as a whole.

When he said that aloud, Soteric laughed mirthlessly, saying, “So they are, for they look as if the first good storm would tear them out by the roots.”

“They’ve weathered a few to come this far,” Marcus said. Soteric brushed the comment away with a wave of his hand.

The door opened before them; a high-ranking ecclesiastic was ushering out a Videssian noble in white linen trousers and a tunic of lime-green silk. “I trust his Sanctity was able to help you, my lord Dragatzes?” the priest asked courteously.

“Yes, I think so,” Dragatzes replied, but his black-browed scowl was not encouraging. He strode past Marcus, Helvis, and Soteric without seeming to notice them.

Nor did the priest pay them any heed until his gaze, which was following Dragatzes’ retreating back, happened to fall on them. “Is there something I can do to help you?” he said. His tone was doubtful; Helvis and her brother were easy to recognize as Namdaleni, while Marcus himself looked more like a man of the Duchy than a Videssian. There was no obvious reason for folk such as them to visit the head of a faith they did not share.

And even after Marcus asked to speak with Balsamon, the priest at the door made no move to step aside. “As you must know, his Sanctity’s calendar is crowded. Tomorrow would be better, or perhaps the next day …” Go away and don’t bother coming back, Marcus translated.

“Who is it, Gennadios?” the patriarch’s voice came from inside the residence. A moment later he appeared beside the other priest, clad not in his gorgeous patriarchal regalia but in a none too clean monk’s robe of simple blue wool. Catching sight of the four outside his door, he let loose his rich chuckle. “Well, well, what have we here? A heathen and some heretics, to see me? Most honored, I am sure. Come in, I beg of you.” He swept past the spluttering Gennadios to wave them forward.